Nellie"s Needles

Friday, December 12, 2008

Decorating For Christmas

The extent of decorations for Christmas at our house is limited to outside this year since we celebrate the holidays up north with our children's families leaving well before the 25th and coming back after the new year. Also, it's my gift to our immediate neighbors.
I collected holly boughs and evergreen branches from trees on the extensive property owned by the condo association on our morning walks. Magnolia leaves from the tree plus bunches of Nandina berries and branches of red leaves from the shrubs in our yard accent the five holiday swags I constructed to hang between the garage doors in our pod of condos.
I love those Nandina bushes dripping with berries all winter long. In fact I'm fascinated by the abundance of shrubs and trees that stay green through the winter here in Tennessee.
A couple of buildings have stands of Nandinas between the garage doors that began as transplanted seedlings from those in our yard.

The rest of the greenery became a garland for this iron gate. It's my present for a friend who's also a neighbor, but lives in a different set of buildings. She never knows when, or if, I'm going to do this. She either finds me fiddling around at her entrance or discovers it when she comes home.
I stuck the leftovers in this pot located in the walkway leading to her gate.
I've found that branches placed in pots of soil will last until about Valentine's Day in this climate. I call them winter bouquets.

4 comments:

arlee said...

and people here pay a fortune to have winter greenery like that! beautifully done!

Ali Honey said...

Those are beautiful NATURAL decorations. Just lovely! Nandina are well worth growing - but it is summer here LOL.

LuĂ­sa Silva said...

Lovely Christmas decorations, so green and natural. They are beautiful!

Anonymous said...

How very lovely! I wish you were MY neighbor.

jan